Communication ? The vital link in best practice organisations

Abstract

The critical issue of communication has been addressed by the Princess AlexandraHospital in Brisbane. The hospital commissioned a communications audit,benchmarked outside the health sector in the service industry, and designed andpiloted communication strategies at an organisational level and in selected clinicalsettings. The communications models developed have emphasised the importance ofplanning, evaluation and flexibility to enable the modification of communicationstrategies to continually improve communication in the organisation. It is envisagedthat regular communication assessments will be conducted with the use of audit toolswhich have been developed to compare results over time.